Comments on: Caramels http://leitesculinaria.com/4413/recipes-caramels.html This James Beard Award-winning site from David Leite offers food writing, cookbook and Portuguese recipes, giveaways, more. Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:33:09 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Testers Choice http://leitesculinaria.com/4413/recipes-caramels.html#comment-7776 Testers Choice Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:56:14 +0000 http://leitesculinaria.com/wordpress/?p=4413#comment-7776 [Allison Parker] If I had known that making caramels could be this easy and yield such fabulous results, I would have made my own long ago. Of course, leave it to Jacques Pépin to guide one with ease and typical French savoir faire through the process. This recipe is, as he says, pretty much foolproof, so if you have never made caramels before, start here, now. The caramels are thick, chewy, and deep in their flavor without adding a thing, though chocolate never hurts. I made plain and chocolate-dipped caramels, and will continue in my experimentation with flavors: a teaspoon of orange-blossom essence added to the sugar water provides a subtle perfume, and topping dipped caramels with ground pistachio or other nuts is one more way to dress them up, though none of this is necessary. One important bit of advice, if you are a rogue cook who likes to wing it without recommended equipment: Do not make these caramels without a candy thermometer. Once the cream and butter are added to the sugar, the process goes quickly—for me, several minutes faster than the recipe stated—and you can easily overcook the caramel for your taste if you rely solely on a time indication. A degree or two of temperature variation has a big impact on the texture of the caramels, so watch for that 240°F to 245°F (115°C to 118°C) range and pull the caramel from the heat without delay, according to your preference for soft or hard caramel. For cutting and dipping: While my caramels were still too soft to cut fully after 4 hours (they needed that extra hour), I nevertheless scored them into 20 pieces to make cutting that much easier, once the caramels were hard. If you're using chocolate, make sure it cools a bit to thicken before dipping the caramels, to minimize the spread of liquid chocolate once you put caramels back down on the baking sheet. Wrapping the finished caramels individually in clear plastic shows off their gorgeous rich-brown color. I placed mine in tiny cellophane bags and tied them off with multicolored ribbons for favors for guests who came to visit, and they were a huge success. [Allison Parker] If I had known that making caramels could be this easy and yield such fabulous results, I would have made my own long ago. Of course, leave it to Jacques Pépin to guide one with ease and typical French savoir faire through the process. This recipe is, as he says, pretty much foolproof, so if you have never made caramels before, start here, now.

The caramels are thick, chewy, and deep in their flavor without adding a thing, though chocolate never hurts. I made plain and chocolate-dipped caramels, and will continue in my experimentation with flavors: a teaspoon of orange-blossom essence added to the sugar water provides a subtle perfume, and topping dipped caramels with ground pistachio or other nuts is one more way to dress them up, though none of this is necessary.

One important bit of advice, if you are a rogue cook who likes to wing it without recommended equipment: Do not make these caramels without a candy thermometer. Once the cream and butter are added to the sugar, the process goes quickly—for me, several minutes faster than the recipe stated—and you can easily overcook the caramel for your taste if you rely solely on a time indication. A degree or two of temperature variation has a big impact on the texture of the caramels, so watch for that 240°F to 245°F (115°C to 118°C) range and pull the caramel from the heat without delay, according to your preference for soft or hard caramel.

For cutting and dipping: While my caramels were still too soft to cut fully after 4 hours (they needed that extra hour), I nevertheless scored them into 20 pieces to make cutting that much easier, once the caramels were hard. If you’re using chocolate, make sure it cools a bit to thicken before dipping the caramels, to minimize the spread of liquid chocolate once you put caramels back down on the baking sheet.

Wrapping the finished caramels individually in clear plastic shows off their gorgeous rich-brown color. I placed mine in tiny cellophane bags and tied them off with multicolored ribbons for favors for guests who came to visit, and they were a huge success.

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